Sarmin blinked. He had been half in dreams, wondering at his last night’s vision. Though tied to his bed he had traveled far, to speak with a wise woman of the mountain clans while Yrkmen swarmed the passes, bound for Fryth. He recalled none of it from Histories, the book that had been ruined. Now Mesema’s voice pulled him back to her room where sunlight fell in bright spots against their cushions. “Do you?” It seemed so odd a question. He answered as he would have answered before he saw the nothingness in Beyon’s tomb. “Ask me if I believe in stone.” He rolled across the rugs to be closer to Mesema, sprawled on her piled cushions, naked and still complaining of the heat. “Do you believe in stone?” Mesema asked him, lifting her head to watch him in the sunlight that reached them through the perforations overhead. “I do.” “And why?” She lifted up, a sway of milk-heavy breasts, and reached for her fan.
